• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.75-91
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• 2017

Lately, countries around the world have been focusing their efforts on shifting from conventional industries to innovative-technology-based industries, and committing their competencies to growing startups as an important next-generation industry that will lead national competitiveness. However, there are inadequacies in studies and methods that analyze research and development (R&D) investment and startup performance from a technology perspective, which is an innate nature of startups. This study analyzed the correlation between a startup's R&D investment and its performance. More specifically, this study performed a correlation analysis and a panel analysis on startups that reached KRW 100 billion in revenue; these analyses were not applied in previous studies. The following are the findings: first, the R&D investment percentage of startups located in other regions was relatively higher than that of those in the Seoul metropolitan area, and second, when a startup's operating margin and net profit margin were high, its R&D investment percentage tended to go higher. In conclusion, this study identified that R&D performance resulting from R&D investment was a core competency factor in the success of a startup.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.189-201
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to analyze the ICT startup investment status in Korea and examine the relationship between startups and venture capitals by network analysis. In this study, the Gephi was used to analyze network attribute values and to compare the results of each centrality. As a result of the analysis, IMM investment, Altos Ventures, and Smilegate Investment were located in the top ranks in each centrality. It can present that venture capital companies ranked high in betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality have continuously invested in growing startups into unicorns from 2014 to 2019. These results can be used as data for startups want to receive funding from venture capital in the future in consider to the relation of startup and invest industry. This study provides information to develop strategies for the sustainable venture investment environment in Korea of stakeholders such as startups, venture capital, consumers, and the government; as a result, it can help various follow-up studies in the field of startups and venture capital.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.1495-1504
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• 2018

The Moon administration has proposed three major directions for startup growth: the creation of a new environment, active investment, and the creation of a virtuous cycle in venture investment. The policy is progressive but not sufficient to create a startup innovation boom in the current Korean economic environment. ICT Startup support policies must pay more attention to the product release stage. For growth of startups and small businesses it is important to establish a close value chain to secure competitiveness in the global market. It is necessary to secure a bridgehead to advance into the global market, including technical cooperation with large companies and joint advancement overseas. The final goal of the startup policy should be the continuous growth of the national economy and the expansion of employment. The establishment of fair trade and the strengthening of the startup ecosystem are important to foster a startup-friendly environment. Funding programs requires a shift from general support to enhanced choice and focus.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.97-110
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• 2020

This paper is on the policy proposal for venture ecosystem. First, one of the three secrets of the US venture ecosystem is the law of 50:50. Angel capital investment is as important as venture capital investment. Although professional angel investors and accelerators account for as much as VC in the venture ecosystem, they are ignored from policy considerations. We argue that the revision of related law is urgent. Second, large US firms invest more in M&As than in internal R&D. Therefore, accelerators and professional angel investors could make effective investment recovery after investing in a startup company. In other words, angel capital does not come in without secondary market development. Angel capital and secondary markets are the two pillars of the venture ecosystem. The government alone is difficult to develop a secondary market. This is why the private sector should come in and introduce corporate venture capital (CVC). Third, we believe the policy direction for national economic growth should be extended from the startup to scale-up. This is because the startup's sales and job creation will start in five years. While the previous study focused on funding (venture financing), this paper aims to balance all three stages of a venture: startup, growth, and recovery, which are the life cycle of a venture company or venture investment. In particular, we propose specific policies in each chapter to improve practical application.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.127-135
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• 2020

The purpose of this paper is to classify individual startups by growth stage based on data-based quantitative criteria. This is to provide a basis for systematic support for government startups based on accurate statistics on the startup growth process. This startups were the TIPS (Tech Incubator Program for Startup) support company, which used a relatively reliable startup. We found seed money to complete MVP (Minimum Viable Product) within 1.5 years after establishment, verified PMF (Product-Market Fit) within 1 year, attracted Series A investment within 2.5 years after establishment, and successfully commercialized it. It attracted Series B investment for stable growth within 1.5 years (Series B investment within 4 years from start-up). The results of the study, the division of government programs that support stage-based startup commercialization, that is, within three years and within seven years of establishment, is significant to date. Three directions are suggested for future research. First, develop indicators for monitoring startup growth stages. Second, it continuously updates the annual changes and tracks the growth stages of individual startups. Third, we discover the successful growth law of technology-based startups by applying in-depth case analysis of successful startups to the model.

• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.21-25
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• 2015

Investment process on startup companies faces several difficulties based on the characteristics of this type of companies, such as lack of historical data, current operating losses and absence of comparable companies. In this paper we focus in a new methodology based on ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operators. OWA operators are useful instruments that enable the aggregation of information; in other words, from a data set we are able to obtain a single representative value of that set. The investment methodology presented consists on the application of OWA operators to the targeted startup companies based on the capacity of cash-flow generation and also on the planned scenario of future growth for each company. This paper shows that the methodology proposed can serve as a valuable tool, complementing the qualitative criteria (which, obviously, should not be ignored) for assessing and selecting a start-up investment.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.584-593
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• 2018

The startup, which is a common noun to start a small business, has been recently one of main targets for policymakers due to its important role for job creation and considerable potential for sustainability of an economy. However, technological entrepreneurship decreased by 5.0% p from 2013 to 2016. The revitalization of entrepreneurial investment promoted by the government is mainly supported in fruitable venture companies at grow stage or 2~3 years before IPO through venture capital firms and angel funds. It is far from an investment at start-up. It is therefore necessary to motivate private investment to be active in the private start-up sector. In addition, the start-up investment requires institutional support and government support to meet the expectations of investors about the possibility of payback and profitability of private investment invested in the founding period. As a small entrepreneur at a comparably early stage in the lifecycle of business, investments for the startup are generally made by informal investors such as family, friends and fools, and their decision making processes are relatively non-programmed compared with ones for listed corporales such as venture capital and angel fund agency. This study focuses on analyzing decision making factors in investment, and verifying an impact of such factors, specifically the possibility of investment payback and investment profitability, in a decision-making process for the startup especially at the very early stage.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1-12
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• 2022

This paper put the goal on boosting up early startup investment by delivering and positioning SAFE as the main early startup investment type in Korea. In particular, this paper proves the better fitting of SAFE as to the early stage of venture investment than these of Convertible Note. This paper as referring the previous studies of SAFE as the major keystone issues determining active SAFE applying (legal positioning issue, tax treatment issue, failure of inducing the following investment with uncertainty over maturity) proposes boosting up policy of Korean SAFE. First, as to accounting treatment of SAFE, it suggests SAFE to recognize legally as "the capital" on the Korean Venture Investment Act of introducing SAFE actively as venture investment type. Second, as to tax treatment issue, it proposes on amending venture indication rule as the best alternative of resolving tax issue by accepting SAFE as the investment meeting to venture investment requirement. Third, as benchmarking foreign cases, it delivers the method of modifying foreign SAFE Contract Format by adding up more clauses about safety vehicles against the failure of the following investment and fixing maturity date and event. Ultimately, all resolutions of this paper fall on highlighting the role of Korean Venture Investment Act and Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-17
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• 2021

Existing research on the investment relationship between venture capital and start-up companies has mainly focused on choosing a startup from the perspective of venture capital, an investor. However, as competition among venture capital has increased recently, excellent start-ups with proven technology are choosing venture capital in reversely. This study investigated key elements that affect the selection of the venture capital by a startup. To this end, we looked at which venture capital company was selected as the final investor for startups that have received investment proposals from multiple venture capitals at the same time. Six early start-ups(pre-series A/Series A) and five mid-term (Series B/C) start-ups were interviewed to focus on the influence of the three elements regarding venture capital - 1) venture capital reputation, 2) relationship between cofounders and investors, and 3) value adding service provided by venture capital - on choice. As a result of the research, the investment portfolio among the reputations of venture capital was a very important element in selecting venture capital. However, it has been shown that the age and asset under management of venture capital are not important. Relationships have emerged as a very important element. Finally, as for venture capital's value-adding services, start-ups in this study did not consider it important. In particular, consulting and monitoring by venture capital has been found to be a burdening attribute for startups. This study suggests implications that can increase the probability of successful investment by venture capital in the investment market where investment competition is fierce, and enhance mutual understanding between venture capital and startups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.99-109
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• 2015

The investment in healthcare industry has recently increased not only for global ventures but also for the domestic ventures. However, there has been hardship of founding and investment caused by healthcare startups characteristics that are costly and time consuming. In this study, the applicability of 'Lean Startup' theory to healthcare ventures was explored through the case of a domestic startup which accomplished funding from VC and KOSDAQ after establishing based on its technology in healthcare industry. There have been numerous case studies that applied 'Lean Startup' to IT industry. However, this case study that applied 'Lean Startup' to healthcare industry have some implications as follow: First, it is critical to conduct a hypothesis testing at initial research stage through R&D of 'MVP' (Minimum Viable Product) as the prototype testing is strictly prohibited in healthcare industry. Second, healthcare R&D teams ought to be well organized as startup teams and all researchers should be equipped with entrepreneurship as the licensing process in healthcare industry is time-consuming and costly due to issues like clinical studies. Lastly, management skills as smart and light as 'Lean Startup' are required in order to encourage young engineers' technology startups.